He mumbled something.
“What?” she demanded sharply.
He looked at her in irritation. “I said it’s a man’s job; it always has been. Now let’s get back to work. Ready to move out again?”
In an instant she turned from a person into a machine. “Ready. One more jump and she’ll be in deep space. There’s nothing left to go through the but E-2 layer of the ionosphere; move her all the way out this time.”
HE TURNED obediently to his controls and then threw the switches that recalled the great atomic engines of the rocket to throbbing life. Her nose raised slowly and as her driving jets flared white, she rushed farther out into the unknown. Five miles. Ten. Twenty. Forty.
"Mike!” Her voice was panicky. “Stop the ship; something’s happening. Something terrible.”
Braking-jets spouted as he killed the ship’s forward speed enough to throw her into orbit at her new altitude. Not until she was riding smoothly did he leave the controls and rush over to the red-headed physiologist. “What’s the matter?”
“Look! They’re dying.”
On chart after chart the jerky line that registered the heart pulsations of the animals far above wavered erratically and then straightened out as no more impulses came through.
Mike’s face went white as he stared down at the record of failure. He licked his suddenly dry lips. “ ‘The moving finger writes,’ ” he said thickly.
She moved quickly down the long row of recorders. “Mike!” Her voice was like a sudden glad trumpet. “Here’s one that’s coming out of it! And another! And another!”
His own heart thumped momentarily out of phase as it reacted to the sudden charge of adrenalin that was dumped into his blood stream. “Which ones?” he whispered. “Did the chimps make it? They’re the most like us. If it’s just the lower forms that went under, if it’s just the rats and the rabbits, maybe we’ve still got a chance?” Her face .was an expressionless mask when she finished her check and turned to face him. “There’s something in the E-2 layer that went through all our shielding. I don’t know yet how it does it but it seems to scramble up the neural impulses originating in the autonomic nervous system. The heart runs wild, and . . .”
“To hell with the lecture! Did the chimps make it?”
When she didn’t answer he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her violently. “Did the chimps make it!”
She stood passively until his emotional explosion exhausted itself and he let her go. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Some of them did,” she said.
His face suddenly changed and took on a look of savage excitement. “I’ll get that ship down right away. You get your staff together and as soon as I land it you can start checking the animals still alive for survival characteristics. Once you’ve found what they are, we’ll screen the crew and make what replacements are necessary. Every man is already trained to handle three jobs. Even if you guess wrong and a few of us are knocked out going through the E-2 layer, there’ll be enough left to get the ship on through to Mars.”
He jumped back to his controls and sent the distant rocket screaming earthward. “Come home, baby,” he shouted. “You’ll take us out * on the long hop yet.”
THE PHYSIOLOGIST didn’t say anything; she just went on methodically making entries in her log book. When at last Mike’s skillful fingers brought the rocket gently down on the landing apron beside the fortress-like control center, he slumped back with a sigh of exhaustion.
"Get into your radiation armor,” he said, “and get those specimens into the lab fast. There’s a lot of work to be done in a hurry and you’re just the gal to do it.”
She hesitated for a moment and then came slowly over to him. “There’s no rush, Mike; I already know the answer.”
He pulled himself to his feet and stood looking down at her from his full six feet three. Aside from a slight tremor in his legs, he had complete control of himself. “’You know the crew. Which of us qualify?”
She looked at him compassionately. “I’m sorry, Mike.”
Only a convulsive stiffening betrayed the sudden racking torment her words released within him. “I’m replaceable,” he said. “Do any of the others have to be eliminated?”
"All of them, Mike. But there will be replacements who will be able to stand the shock of the E-2 layer crossing; I can take over as ship’s physiologist.”
He shook his head sadly and put a comforting arm around her. “You know the regulations, honey; I guess we’re both grounded.” There were tears in her eyes as she pulled away from him. There was something else there too. “I’m afraid the regulations are going to have to be changed, Mike. The rats, and the rabbits, and the chimps that made it through . . .” Her voice caught in her throat.
Mike looked down at the little figure.
"The females,” he said.
It was a statement, not a question.
THE BIG STINK
Trading with Mr. Wetzle, whose fright chemistry was peculiarly akin to that of a good old American skunk, was dangerous business. However, Sammy had principles and nobody—and no aroma!—was going to shake him from them.
LIKE SAMMY said, even if it was only a hole in the wall, it was his drugstore; and if any goniff from the Anti-Martian League thought he was going to tell him how to run his business, he had another think coming.
His wife Sarah wasn’t seeing eye to eye with him. It-wasn’t because she was eighty pounds heavier and a foot taller than he was, it was simply that every time Sammy got his back up, somebody got hurt—and it was usually Sammy.
“Last time you said that it was to that nice young man from the Merchants Protective Association who wanted you to take out insurance on the new store. And what happened? Three times in two weeks hoodlums break in and smash things up.”
“I got my principles,” said Sammy sternly.
“Yeah,” said Sarah, “principles! Ten years we save so that you, a registered pharmacist, a man who placed third on the state boards, should have a big place you could be proud of instead of a dirty little hole like this. We finally get it and what happens? You got principles and the bank has Rosen’s Cut-Rate Drugs. Now we’re starting over again, business ain’t too bad, already we’ve been able to put away a little for a rainy day, and you and your principles want to start trouble again.”
“Trouble I don’t want,” said Sammy. “Trouble I’ve never wanted, I’m a peace loving man. But I got my rights. Sammy Rosen isn’t going to let himself be shoved around by nobody.”
“Who’s getting shoved? So ya sign a paper. Maybe you’re going to drop dead, you should sign a paper? O’Reilly next door, he’s not doing business because he signed a paper? Ail of Fourth Avenue and you’re the only one that’s got to be stubborn.”
“What should O’Reilly know about principles? Eight years now he’s been having the same fire sale. Sign the paper, NO! There will be no sign in my window saying that Martians will not be served here.”
Sarah sighed in exasperation.
“That green fur-ball comes here maybe two three times a week to buy a nickel’s worth of candy. For that business you should maybe get a brick through the window like last time? You sign the paper so we should keep out of trouble and next time he comes in you tell him he should go buy his candy someplace else and not get honest people in trouble.”
“You order some more chocolate syrup?” asked Sammy. “Last time I checked we were getting low.”
“Don’t change the subject. That man said he would be back in ten minutes.”
“So he wants to come back, he can come back. It’s a free world.”
Mr. Suggs was back in six minutes. He was a large man and the conservative business suit he wore didn’t harmonize well with the bulk of his shoulders, his cauliflower ears, or the generally battered appearance of his fat face.
“Afternoon, Mr. Rosen,” he boomed. “Lovely day, ain’t it. Kind of weather that makes a man glad he’s alive and healthy. Right?”
“Right,” said Sammy with a touch of uneasiness.
The big man opened his briefcase and took out a legal looking document.
“Now that you’ve had lime to think it over, I know you’ve come to see things our way. Just sign here and you’ll be a member in good standing of the Anti-Martian League just like everybody else around here.”
Drawing himself up to his full five feet two, Sammy shoved the paper away and said with all the firmness he could muster, “Anybody wants to buy something in my store, that’s what I got it for. All kinds of people come in here. I should start putting signs up this one can’t come in because he don’t vote the way I do and that one can’t come in because he calls his god a different name than I do, and pretty soon there’s so many signs in the window that the sun can’t get in and the only customer I got left is myself.” He paused for breath and gave the document another shove. “Sammy Rosen’s name don’t go down on nothing like that!”
“Listen, punk,” growled the big man, and then suddenly caught himself. “Listen, Mr. Rosen, I agree with you a hundred percent. But what you’re talking about are humans. Martians ain’t.”
“Human or Martian, a customer is a customer. What’s where a customer comes from got to do with my doing business with him? I go to pay my rent I don’t have to fill out a paper saying where I got each dollar.”
The big man snorted in disgust. “So that’s it. You little guys are all alike. You like to talk about principles but what you’re really afraid of is losing a nickel. Well suppose I fix things so that by joining the League you make yourself a nice chunk of change on the deal?”
Without waiting for Sammy’s answer, he opened his briefcase again and took out a small vial and placed it on the counter. Sammy looked at it questioningly.
“Maybe this will make you change your mind,” said the big man.
“What is it?”
“A full ounce of Venusian Leather!”
Sammy’s eyebrows went up and he whistled in spite of himself. Like everybody else he had heard of the fabulously expensive scent for men put out by the House of Arnett, a perfume that had such a powerful emotional effect on members of the opposite sex that for years there had been some talk in the World Congress of banning it.
“That’s worth five thousand smackers on the wholesale market,” said the big man. “Just put your John Henry down here and it’s yours.”
“He’ll sign!” said Sarah quickly. She turned fiercely on her husband. “You heard what the man said—five thousand dollars! With that we can get out of this hole in the wall and have a decent place again.
Think of it, Sammy, a big place on the corner with a neon sign six feet high blinking out ROSEN’S CUT-RATE DRUGS in red and green and purple!”
The picture hit Sammy hard. He dosed his eyes, the better to visualize the glorious sight. Like a man in a trance his hand reached out slowly for the fat-bellied fountain pen that Mr. Suggs was holding out to him.
“You’ll never regret this, Rosen. You’re the last place within twenty blocks of the spaceport that hasn’t signed. With the neighborhood one hundred percent against them, those stinking greenies are going to feel so unpopular that they’ll have to pack up and go home.”
Sammy hesitated and then picked up the contract and scanned it near-sightedly.
“There’s an awful lot of small print here,” he said.
“It’s all on the up-and-up.” said the big man, “All that it boils down to is that you agree not to have no truck with any Martians that happen to come around. It’s for your own protection. If we don’t put that bunch in their place, pretty soon Earth will be swarming with those little stinkers.”
“Maybe so,” muttered Sammy, “but five thousand bucks just so I don’t sell a couple of nickels worth of candy, that don’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to,” said Mr. Suggs. “Like you said yourself, when you go to pay your rent nobody’s asking where the money came from. You want to keep Earth safe for Earthmen, you sign. Any time a Martian lands, he’s put in Coventry. Nobody talks to him, nobody does business with him, nobody even lets on he exists. Under the treaty the World Government made after the first landing on Mars, we can’t keep them from coming here. But there’s nothing in the law that says we got to make them welcome. This here contract is just a legal gentleman’s agreement that—”
“A WHAT?”
“A legal gentleman’s agreement.”
“OUT!”
Sammy’s eyes were blazing.
“What’s eating you?” demanded Suggs. “What did I say?”
“Enough! Enough to bring me to my senses. And for a fistful of dirty dollars I, Sammy Rosen, was going to be a part of it.” He spat in self-disgust.
“Now listen here!”
“I don’t listen to nothing. Get out of my store before I call a cop!” The big man turned to Sarah. “Can’t you reason with him, lady?”
She took one look at her husband’s tight-lipped face and shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. “Not when he’s like that.”
“You don’t listen to nothing, eh, Rosen? We’ll see about that.” He picked up his briefcase and the perfume and started toward the door. When he reached it he turned.
“You’re going to find out what a stinker a Martian can really be. And when you do, you’re going to be happy to sign—for nothing!”
SAMMY SLEPT in the store that night but nobody tried to break in and no bricks came crashing through the windows. When Sarah arrived with his breakfast, he was in a slightly happier mood.
“See,” he said, “no trouble.” Sarah didn’t say anything, Sammy was about to receive the silent treatment. Just after she left and he had settled down in his old rocker at the rear of the store to read the morning paper, he heard the tinkle of the customer bell from the front. When he saw nobody standing on the other side of the counter he knew who had come in. He leaned over the showcase and looked down at the little foot-high ball of green fur that was bouncing up and down in front of the candy case. When it saw him it piped in a fluttering flute-like voice, “A thousand greetings, egg-mother. May your fwentok never lose its rotundity and your gertlings embrace all eternity.”
“Mazel-tov yourself, Mr. Wetzle,” said Sammy politely. “Nice day, isn’t it.”
“For Marslings the response is in the negative. Tomorrow is our last day earthside.”
“Business isn’t so good?”
“Business isn’t. The streets are full of signs saying here we cannot enter, and the buyers who come to our ship look at our holds of dried keera berries and laugh or say angry words and depart without buying.”
“Things’Il get better,” said Sammy comfortingly. “They’re bound to.”
“Is not better, egg-mother, is sadness and departing. In the coming there were bouncings of happiness and singings in the companionways because now we were free of the Company and there would be no more horrors for our folklings from the dwirtles in the trading shed. Six of your years my peoples had worked to save enough of the green earth paper to charter the ship that brought us. We were thinkings that because the Company prized the berries that here they would be prized too. But it is not so and now we must return to tell our peoples that we have found only failures. The Company will be angry because we came and now they will ask more and give less. And no protest will be made, for without the pumps and other machine things we get from them to bring the water up from the deep wells there would come again the great hunger that was on us before the earthman came.”
“There must be some way out,” said Sammy. “These berries, maybe if you took them to a good chemist he could find out what they were good for.”
“This we did,” said the little Martian, “And after waiting came a long report full of big words which said in many different ways was usefulness nothing.” He paused and ruffled his silky green fur. “But you have been my friend and it is not kind to be casting on your fwentok our troubles. My coming this day was to say farewell and blessings.” He he
sitated a moment. “And if you’ll forgiving, to ask a question which is giving deep bothering.”
“Yes?” said Sammy.
“Why for four little Mars peoples could there be such a closing of stores against us and a putting of signs in windows?”
“You’ve got me,” said Sammy.
“There’s an organization behind it, a big one, and they’re spending a lot of money, a whole lot of money.” He thought wistfully of the vanished five thousand dollars and what he could have done with it and then made a determined effort to banish the thought from his head. Reaching down, he slid open the door on the candy case.
“What’ll you have this morning, Mr. Wetzle?”
“Nothings,” said the little Martian sadly. “The last of my earth coins are gone and in my pouch now is nothings but valueless keera berries.” He bounced almost to the front door and then turned. “Of you, egg-mother, there will be fond memories. Blessings and farewell.”
“Wait,” said Sammy impulsively, and reaching into the candy case he filled a small sack with an assortment of licorice whips, lemon drops, green leaves, bubble gum, chocolate malt balls, and jawbreakers of various shapes and colors.
“Here,” he said, thrusting the bag forward. “Take it with you and eat in good health.”
Wetzle eyed the bag wistfully but didn’t come forward to take it.
“I bless your thought, egg-mother, but to take without payment cannot be done. Such is the speaking of the oldsters.”
“Who said anything about no payment,” said Sammy. “If those berries are good enough for that company on Mars, they ought to be good enough for Sammy Rosen,” He paused as if he were making a quick mental computation. “I’d say there were about ten berries worth of candies in that sack.” He held it forward again. “Here, take it.”
“But . . .” protested the Martian.
“No buts,” said Sammy firmly, “I run my business, I set my prices. Among friends there should be no argument.”
The alien hesitated for a moment and then gave a happy bounce that took him up on top of the candy counter.
Collected Fiction Page 22
